Death!
by Chixawitch
Summary: McGonagall remains caught in the past, unable to rid herself of a certain Headmaster's portrait. Harry, Ron and Hermione are also left without a sense of purpose - but could the resurrection of a traitorous Potions professor wake them from their lethargy?
1. Death!

A/N: This is the first fanfiction I've written in several years, so I apologise for any rustiness. The following was intended to be a oneshot, but if I get enough positive reviews it might become the first chapter of a full-length fanfic I'm currently planning.

* * *

Minerva McGonagall walked slowly up the spiral staircase to her office, lacking the energy to make it carry her to the top itself. One more thing, she thought quietly, that she missed about Albus: she could never remember the staircase static when he had been Headmaster, never remember having to enchant it. She wondered, vaguely, whether everyone else had to climb up it now, or whether this special treatment was reserved for her. Either way, it was nothing short of a taunt to her eighty-two years.

As the door creaked open, she closed her eyes and sighed for a moment, unwilling to enter a room so familiar and yet so unknown. Strangely enough, it was her own possessions that gave it such an air of foreignity. Even after three years, it was peculiarly someone else's office – perhaps because its rightful occupant had never left it, she noted wryly. Everything seemed to be converging, the room looming in on her like the opening to a grave – _whisky_, she thought to herself, walking to the cupboard that, until recently, had housed Dumbledore's Pensieve. Thankfully, that had vanished at his death – she did not know quite how she would have managed to move the thing without one look, one glance at the strange, white, glistening matter it contained. Dumbledore's thoughts, ever elusive.

Anger surged, and she shook it off, sitting down – finally – in the Headmaster's chair. Her chair, as of – oh, years, now, she told herself as she surveyed the room with deliberate impassivity. Godric's sword in its glass case: they had both been Gryffindors, she saw no reason to remove that. The far corner, where Fawkes's perch had once stood, was now occupied by her hat-stand which, although for the moment hatless, was almost swamped in heavy tartan cloaks. It was turning out to be a miserable April, the proverbial showers proving to be more like snowstorms. Sometimes, Minerva thought, she truly regretted never having left her home country for warmer climes. She took another sip of whisky, paused, and downed the glass.

"Good evening, Minerva," Dumbledore smiled at her from the wall above the fireplace, beside his chair – _her _chair, McGonagall promptly corrected herself.

"Evening, Albus," she said curtly. She would not rise to the bait; would not voice the thoughts, the angry words, that she had been nurturing. She would keep quiet, as she had done for the past three – _three_? – years.

"Long day?"

"The Potions master is ill again – it's the draught down in those cellars, I'm sure. Nothing in the hospital wing can cure it, so it's convalescence and a cover teacher until…" She trailed off, the sleeping portrait of Phineas suddenly catching her eye.

"I don't know how Severus managed it… I wish…" She was struck, almost incredibly, with loss: but it would pass, she knew. It had done for years, now – soon it would be decades and, like all her other pain, would become little more than a dull ache. The thought of Severus's death, after all, was nothing but a mask hiding the agonising sting of a more important death that she had been denying for so long, and would continue to deny: indefinitely, if necessary. It came as something of a skill, in old age, to hold such memories and continually ignore them; never to relive the past, never to wonder what might be or even what might have been – a skill she felt sadly lacking in, with such youth all around her and yet in such close proximity to its opposite.

"In remembrance of the dead you must not forget to live," Dumbledore murmured from his perch above her, his voice dragging Minerva out of her sombre train of thought. Looking down on her, as always. The whisky was beginning to take effect, coursing through her aged veins, warming her cold, cold blood…

"And not so long ago you could have said 'we'."

The words fell carelessly out of her mouth, throwing out all the anger of the past few months. Biting, explicit criticism held itself on the tip of her tongue and Minerva felt suddenly stilled, poised on the edge of a verbal vertical drop, her hasty sentence of a moment ago already tumbling down it like loosened scree. She gripped the arms of the ancient chair, steeling herself against a fall, and stared unseeingly down at the mottled floor. Dumbledore's portrait was silent, watching her with a worried air, and the late Headmaster's concerned gaze more than anything propelled her out of her seat, out of her self-pity, and into cold, merciless rage.

"Did you not _think_?" she screamed at him, sitting in the picture frame with such a benign smile, such carefree wisdom, "Did you never stop to- to _consider_ it for one moment? What about everyone else, Albus?" Her voice cracked, her legs shaking, and she threw the whisky glass at the canvas with all the force her aged body could muster to watch the shards shatter around her feet. They were unimportant.

"A hero's death! An old man's plunge into oblivion – satisfied, are you? On your next _great_ _adventure_?" Gasping, she stared up at him, waiting for an answer. Something had to be said, something meaningful… Dumbledore was silent.

"What about _me_, Albus?" she whispered.

Silence fell. Shaking, unsure on her wizened feet, Minerva held the Headmaster's gaze; her eyes, once so bright blue, paler now and watery with emotion. If a portrait could look askance at anything, Dumbledore looked at her askance now; she narrowed her eyes and concentrated all her effort on his guiltless expression, as if to force him to answer her. But he said nothing: nothing in his face revealed the slightest feeling, the slightest responsibility, the merest hint of regret. Just surprise, and pity. He – the dead man – pitied her.

"I don't want your pity-"

"Yes."

"What?" Minerva caught herself just in time, teetering on the verge of another assault but held motionless by that one, small admission. Such a tiny word – such breadth it covered!

"I thought about it… I thought about _you_," Dumbledore murmured finally, bright blue painted eyes – surely not even magical artists could recreate that colour – fixed on the painted floor on which he stood. A shadow seemed to cross his canvas face. Minerva searched his eyes, those eyes still so piercing and alive, for some recognition, some hint, some guidance.

"Do you – I mean, do you remember- remember _everything_?" she asked suddenly. He had no need to clarify.

"Everything up to the moment of my death." She nodded in acceptance, casting around and seeing, in the corner, quite suddenly, Fawkes's perch. Occupied, but by a younger bird – Fawkes in the prime of his life, proud plumage shining golden – watching a younger man. So familiar the scene, and yet so strange; so utterly unreachable.

"We could have…"

"But it was so long ago, Minerva," he cut in flatly, seating himself in a chair behind him, identical to that into which McGonagall now sank down. She nodded tiredly, suddenly ashamed of her human weaknesses; her wrinkles, suddenly etched deeper, the dark circles round her eyes.

"Then, too," she muttered eventually, Summoning another bottle of whisky and mending the glass she'd thrown with a strangely heavy wave of her wand. Dumbledore waited patiently – knowingly, even – while she poured out a glass, drank it, and tucked the bottle away in a desk drawer. Finally, she turned back to him.

"I know it would have been difficult, but..."

"You loved me," he finished.

"Yes."

"And I…"

They both let the sentence hang, not needing to bear the shame of seeing it finished. Minerva knew, somehow, that it was impossible to complete. Dumbledore had the rare gift of loving everyone and yet no one, at the same time. She wondered, mutely, whether he had ever felt true emotion for anyone.

"You – you if ever I possibly could," he said finally.

Minerva, understanding, moved to take his hand; to reassure him, to let him know that she didn't… She stopped, inches from the polished frame. Her fingers curled up, faced only with the already cracking surface of an oil painting: peach tones, and pink, and blue-grey, meaningless shapes that gave the illusion of a human hand. She pulled away as if from a hot stove, knowing Dumbledore would have noticed even as she tried to be nonchalant. His face, however, gave nothing away; his blue eyes held nothing but pity. He pitied her! This relic of an all-too-mortal man, a leftover, a shadow in a world Albus had long since quit, had humanity enough to pity her.

"Goodnight, Albus."

And she turned away from those blue eyes, and left the room.

* * *

A/N: I know JK has hinted that Dumbledore is gay, but I like to think he also had a soft spot for Minerva - if ever he could. If this does develop into a full-length fic, it won't be Albus/Minerva: I shy away from pairings involving relations with a bit of canvas :)


	2. Etiquette Lesson

A/N: _Death!_ is, thanks to three lovely reviews (I'm not hard to convince) going to become a longer fic. Apart from Minerva and Albus, it will hopefully involve most of the characters left alive at the end of DH. It was born out of my frustration that JK had, in the last two books, killed off the two most interesting people in the entire series. Therefore they will both be resurrected: one, unfortunately, only in portrait form.

So here's Chapter Two, _Etiquette Lesson_. Let me know what you think and what you'd like more (or less) of: while I have the plotline mapped out in quite a lot of detail, there's always room for more character interaction and asides.

* * *

Many miles away, Hermione Granger was also staring into the eyes of a man she thought she once had known. Across the table from her in the cramped, stuffy room, what looked like a tramp was slumped in a chair, hand across his eyes. Absolutely nothing about him drew attention. He was almost entirely hidden in an old, battered green coat, stubble concealing the line of his jaw and dark circles ringing his eyes. Had they once been green, Hermione wondered? They no longer looked it. She pushed a cup of tea towards him, and he watched it for a long time before taking a sip.

"You OK?" she asked slowly. He didn't reply immediately, swirling the dregs of his tea in the cup like a wine connoisseur. She could swear crows' feet were appearing in the corners of those eyes.

"How's the research going?"

Hermione shrugged.

"So-so. I mean, it's very interesting – fascinating, in fact – I can't believe I spent so long learning so much worthless…" She trailed off, realising that Harry wasn't listening to a word she was saying.

"Have you…"

"No," he answered shortly, silencing her with just a glimpse over her chipped teacup. He glanced around the room, taking in the yellowed walls and dark bookshelves stuffed with books of all shapes and sizes; the window left ajar only because it wouldn't shut, and the complete lack of fireplace. Hermione followed his gaze, feeling slightly embarrassed.

"Is this where you live now, then?"

"Yes. Well, at least – yes. This isn't it; there's a bedroom and a bathroom, and-"

Harry laughed hollowly. "I'm not exactly in a position to judge."

Hermione neither acknowledged nor denied Harry's current living arrangements. In any case, she thought suddenly, she couldn't – she had no idea what the Boy Who Lived had been doing with himself since he left the Weasleys' house six months ago. Sleeping rough, by the look of him.

"So you, er…" she began, unsure of how to broach the subject.

"I've been abroad", Harry replied shortly, anticipating her question, "I needed to get out of here."

"Right." Hermione felt suddenly uneasy in Harry's presence, in a way she never had before. She hadn't had such a long conversation with someone in weeks – perhaps months – and his uncommunicative replies and silences were not making her task easier.

"Spoken to Ron recently?" she asked, trying to inject enthusiasm into her tone.

"No. I saw him in the _Daily Prophet_; he seems fine," Harry shrugged. Hermione wondered if her old friend cared any longer whether Ron was 'fine' or not.

"I saw in the paper that they wanted to award him the Order of Merlin for services to the economy," Hermione remarked after an awkward pause, "Third Class, I would expect, but still… apparently he's all but singlehandedly convinced foreign economies to invest in Britain again."

"I'm sure he has." Harry's hand clenched suddenly around the teacup, "No need to kill Voldemort, was there? S'long as people trust us enough to _bank _with us, oh, we're fine. Wish someone had told me that before I killed the bastard."

Hermione stared. The few sentences were the most words she'd heard Harry utter in months.

"I…"

"Thanks for the tea, Hermione." Harry stood, still seething, brandishing the teacup in his hand like a wand. He made to throw it into the fire, but the once-fireplace was filled with bookshelves. He threw it into those instead, shards shattering all around them, and Disapparated through a shower of broken china.

Hermione put her head in her hands and groaned. She sat there for what felt like hours, motionless. The cramped, dull room seemed to reflect back onto her all of the lost dreams and hopes of the past years. Hogwarts seemed like a dim memory. The Last Battle – and the sojourn at Malfoy Manor just before – were similarly muted, constant presences in her mind that her consciousness skirted around warily. With long-practised patience, she sat until the confusion faded back into its shadowed recesses and her head cleared.

"_Reparo_!" The teacup was important. She only had two. She filled it with stewed tea from the pot and returned to the table, returning the books and parchment she'd Reduced to make room for Harry to their normal size.

Really, it was unfair for him to drop in on her – quite literally – so unexpectedly. She had moved on from babysitting him and Ron when they left school. She had work to do. She had valuable research to be getting on with. After all, it had taken weeks to invent and modify the protective charms necessary for a Muggleborn to open the book in front of her. If Harry had any sense he would understand the merit of what she was doing: he had no business levelling those empty eyes at her. He should go and talk to Ron.

Pulling the heavy volume towards her, she dropped into the chair and paused slightly to check the level of protection before opening the cover. Light flashed momentarily between her fingertips and the leather bindings, but nothing happened. The spell was contained. She breathed a sigh of relief. Much of her charming had been guesswork; she hadn't even been sure that the book was the one she wanted. _Lestrange_ was so old it had no title, going merely by the name of its author.

Small victories were useful; they filled the silence left when the memories retreated.

* * *

It was a week before Hermione attempted to contact Harry. He hadn't given her much to go by: a Muggle mobile phone number and the address of a warehouse in a carefully-concealed magical district of London where he was keeping his belongings in storage. Ron's last letter had expressed the rather exasperated hope that Harry was at least looking after his possessions, if not himself. It seemed he was not.

However, the image of one of the Deathly Hallows packaged up in the magical equivalent of a cardboard box and residing in the corner of a warehouse, along with the Marauder's Map and – probably – motheaten old school robes, bothered Hermione rather less than it did Ron. The boys had always obsessed over _things_. She couldn't think of anything less interesting than where Harry was keeping his Firebolt; in any sense of the phrase. She doubted that he'd contacted Ginny in months, and a tiny feeling of guilt wriggled through her thoughts, currently focused on _Lestrange_, as she realised that she hadn't either. She would write – and reply to Ron – as soon as she'd finished with the book. Her work took priority.

"Hello?"

"Harry?"

There was a crackling sigh from the other end of the line. "Hermione." His very tone was aggravating. Who else could he be expecting? He talked to her more than anyone else; she doubted he'd given anyone but her the number. For Merlin's sake, who apart from herself and the Durseleys did he know who could even operate a telephone?

"I thought we could maybe meet up –"

"Why?"

Hermione found herself sighing too. "Ron gets his Order of Merlin in two days' time. I'm going to the ceremony. You – you should go too."

"I'm not going."

"Harry, at least meet me and consider it. Are you at that warehouse you told me about?"

"I'm… No."

"Fine – look, let's meet there anyway then," Hermione replied shortly. Her old friend was grating on her nerves.

"I'd rather – let's meet –"

"Leaky Cauldron?"

"No," Harry said emphatically, "The warehouse is fine." He hung up. Hermione all but threw the payphone she was using to the ground. He'd taken her away from her work, out to find a Muggle telephone box of the kind she'd never used while living as a Muggle anyway – for God's sake, everyone had a landline – which had swallowed a Knut before she remembered to use Muggle money, then taken so long to connect… Yet she understood his wish for privacy. She'd not set foot in the Leaky Cauldron since the Battle of Hogwarts. She doubted many others had either.

She Apparated to the warehouse address. It was a small yard near Chancery Lane, entered through a crooked red-brick archway leading off a quiet side road and squashed between old, crumbling terraces. There were no shops or cafés, no pubs, no people… although so close to the centre of the capital, the silence made Hermione feel uneasy. Upon entering, the archway shimmered slightly as it registered her magic, something that did nothing to ease her growing discomfort. The place looked like a glorified carpark: tiny, with several steel doors leading off the cramped space into the buildings behind. There was nothing even remotely resembling storage space, and for a moment Hermione wondered whether she'd found the right place.

"You're here," a voice said from behind her, and Hermione jumped visibly in surprise before collecting herself, embarrassed. Without pausing to greet her, Harry strode past and unlocked one of the steel doors with a touch of his wand. They entered – into an impossibly cavernous room that seemed to open out from nowhere, filled with boxes. Hermione shook her head. She would never get used to a wizard's perspective.

"This is all your stuff?"

"Yeah."

"How…" The question died on Hermione's lips. It would be rude to ask. But she couldn't help wondering; Harry had so very few possessions. The Dursleys had hardly given him anything. Everything he had ever owned had fitted in the trunk at the bottom of his bed at school. She looked up, to find him watching her expression warily.

"It's – most of it is my parents'. Their – my – house was preserved magically, but then it got damp… apparently there's no magical cure for damp–"

His green eyes were shining strangely and Hermione could tell he was on the verge of tears. She had no idea what to do. Ginny would hug him, sit him down, tell him everything would be alright…But Gods, she wasn't Ginny. She hated the kind of emotional sidestepping one had to do now around Harry with a fervour usually reserved for the Ministry, certain choice opponents of house-elf rights and Lucius Malfoy. Watching her friend's eyes fill with as-yet unspilled tears, she wanted nothing more than to put as much distance between Harry and herself as possible. Even Ron, though admittedly somewhat lacking in tact, was of more use in such situations than her. What on earth was she supposed to do?

"Sit down," she said as gently as possible, manoeuvring him onto the nearest box and on a whim Summoning her teapot and two cups. She hoped Harry wouldn't break them again. There were only so many times one could _Reparo_ something before the pieces started to protest. Considering the treatment her teacups had been subjected to, she certainly would have done, if she were them.

"Have a drink." She thrust a cup into Harry's hands, and he sipped. "Harry – you should have told someone about this."

Harry nodded. "I know."

"How long have they–"

"A few months, maybe."

Hermione drew the nearest box towards her. "You should sort through all this – work out what you can keep so you can furnish your own house. You never know, they might sort out the damp and you could move into Godric's Hollow."

"I can't live there," Harry said immediately and Hermione winced inwardly. It had been the wrong thing to say. She was no good at this.

"Well, anyway…" she reached into the box, undoing the Sealing Charm on it as she went, and took out the first of the objects. It was a photo album – the one Hagrid had given Harry of his parents – but Harry had filled the back pages now, too, with pictures of himself, Ron and Hermione taken on Colin Creevey's camera.

"Look at this – Ron's so tall compared to you!" she exclaimed, thrusting the picture at Harry. He smiled, despite himself, and turned another page.

"There's one here somewhere where your teeth are still crooked – must have taken that ages ago."

Harry picked out the picture and offered it to her, and she paused before taking it.

"Come to the ceremony, Harry."

The boyish grin on his face faded. "I – I don't know if I can. I haven't spoken to Ron in… well, a long time."

"So come patch things up," Hermione urged, "I've barely seen you either. No one has." Something in his face prompted her to add, "They miss you."

At the barely-perceptible flicker in his face, she found herself saying quietly, "I miss you."

Harry nodded, eyes conspicuously fighting against tears. "I'll come."


End file.
